Thing Explainer

By Randall Monroe. Published by John Murray. 

Softcover, 64 pages, Monochrome, 2015. 

Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? Randall Munroe is here to help. In Thing Explainer, he uses line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, “ten hundred”) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is, including:
 

• food-heating radio boxes (microwaves)
• tall roads (bridges)
• computer buildings (datacenters)
• the shared space house (the International Space Station)
• the other worlds around the sun (the solar system)
• the big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates)
• the pieces everything is made of (the periodic table)
• planes with turning wings (helicopters)
• boxes that make clothes smell better (washers and dryers)
• the bags of stuff inside you (cells)

How do these things work? Where do they come from? What would life be like without them? And what would happen if we opened them up, heated them up, cooled them down, pointed them in a different direction, or pressed this button? In Thing Explainer, Munroe gives us the answers to these questions and so many more. Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone—age 5 to 105—who has ever wondered how things work, and why.